Let me take one group of facts from this Report; facts that cry out to us all how urgently wrong things are. In the year 1914, 92,166 children died in England and Wales under one year of age. Think of the wanton wastage: in every thousand children born one hundred and five have died. Their number of the year’s toll of new lives reaches close up to the recorded deaths for the first fifteen months of war![3] And the evil does not end here, for the bad conditions which kill these babies act also in maiming and disabling, or at least in lowering the health standard, of many of the children who live, and thus add to the number of those who die in the early years of childhood, or survive only with enfeebled bodies and defective minds. And, further, no account is taken here of the lives that are lost before birth takes place: I mean the still births and abortions, the ante-natal deaths of which no record is kept. Our tendency is to assume that life begins at the birth, whereas the life of each child starts at the moment of its conception. Thus the birth rate is really the survival from the conception rate. And the destruction of life before birth from adverse ante-natal conditions is probably larger than the death rate in the first post-natal year. You will see that the problem is sufficiently grave. And this unnecessary waste—for it is unnecessary—is going on every year, and will go on until we begin to feel it strongly enough to take action to prevent it. It can be prevented. The chief causes of infant mortality are briefly two— (1) Poor physique of the mother or inheritable disease in one or other parent, causing premature births with weakened constitutions and congenital defects in the children. (2) Ignorance of mothers in appropriate infant care and low standard of home life; bad feeding and insanitary conditions are accountable for the greater number of child deaths. We find the infantile death rate is much higher in urban communities than it is in rural England. It is well to give a table to show this— ANNUAL RATES PER ANNUAL RATES 1000 LIVING PER 1000 BIRTHS Diarrhœa and Infant Birth Rate. Death Rate. Enteritis Mortality (under two Rate. years). England and Wales 23.8 13.7 20.4 105 97 great towns (including London) 25.0 15.0 26.1 114 145 smaller towns 23.9 13.1 19.8 104 England and Wales less the 242 towns 22.2 12.4 12.6 93 London 24.3 14.4 27.6 104